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Software & Computers

About Certificates

Certificates are special files stored by your web browser, application, or
operating system. A combination of a personal certificate issued by Dartmouth,
and the Dartmouth root certificate allow you to be authenticated to resources
on the Dartmouth network.

PKI certificates issued by Dartmouth College for eTokens are currently valid
for four years; those issued to be stored on a computer's hard drive are
currently valid for two years. You do not need to get another certificate until
the one you have expires. You can get more than one certificate, but having too
many may cause problems in some PKI applications.

Advantages of PKI include:

Passwords remain local to your computer or eToken (security
improvement).

PKI authentication works from off campus through firewalls and Network
Address Translation (NAT).

Applications and operating systems support PKI directly, without the need
for additional Kerberos software.

Available applications currently using PKI include:

Dartmouth Secure (SSID) wireless network

Banner Student Information System

Library eResources (those accessed via the
ejaccess mechanism) and medical resources on the OVID system

Blackboard

Windows Active Directory domain

Software downloads

Virtual Private Network (VPN) client

Web Authentication project

Other applications under development include:

Securely signed and encrypted e-mail using Outlook,
OS X mail 1.3.2 and newer, or other e-mail applications that
support S/MIME.